Mall Of America

The Right Start Inc., a Westlake Village marketer of products for infants and toddlers, said it will open eight new retail stores around the country in the next month, bringing the total to 13. The first new store will open in the new Natick Mall near Boston. Other stores will be opened at Santa Anita Fashion Park in Arcadia, the Mall of America in Minneapolis, and at malls in Atlanta, San Francisco, San Jose and Boston. The Right Start sells its products chiefly through catalogues.

Jacob Ghermezian, 97, patriarch of the Canadian development company that built the world's largest shopping mall, in Edmonton, Alberta. Ghermezian, originally from Azerbaijan, established a carpet export business in the Iranian capital of Tehran before immigrating to Montreal in the 1950s. He quickly formed a rug business called Ghermezian Bros., building it into a 16-store chain that operated mainly in the United States.

After a month-long delay caused by winter rains and mechanical issues, Belmont Park in San Diego plans to unveil the Octotron thrill ride Sunday -- and I can hardly wait. State inspectors recently gave the green light to open the prototype flat ride, which was originally scheduled to make its debut at the seaside amusement park in mid-December, officials said. The jaw-dropping ride, which I've eagerly anticipated for months, will simulate a looping roller-coaster experience over an undulating Himalayan-style track . Sitting two abreast in roller coaster-style seats, riders control the forward and backward direction of a spinning car as it rotates around a circular course.

Regular listeners to the "Kevin & Bean" morning show on KROQ-FM (106.7) know better than to believe everything they hear on the comedy program - whether it's about the opening of a Mall of America West, or basketball star Karl Malone playing Santa. But the topic Thursday was as serious, and personal, as life and death. Gene "Bean" Baxter announced that he's donating a kidney to longtime KROQ DJ and chief engineer Scott Mason, who first underwent a transplant in 1999, and has been on dialysis since that kidney started to fail in 2010.

China's Jurassic Dream is racing toward a 2013 grand opening with plans to double the size of the dinosaur-centric indoor theme park within three years of the fast-tracked debut. PHOTOS: Jurassic Dream theme park in China Designed by Burbank-based Thinkwell Group, the 20-acre theme park will be located in Daqing, a petroleum-rich city of 3 million people in northeast China that has been the site of numerous dinosaur fossil finds. "Kids all over the world love dinosaurs, but in China they have an emotional connection to dinosaurs because they are right in their backyard," said Thinkwell creative director Dave Cobb.

Planet Hollywood International Inc. on Monday won approval to emerge from bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years and began focusing on regaining its stature in a battered theme-restaurant industry that peaked in the late 1990s. U.S.

Sports figures were involved in 252 nationally reported police incidents, court appearances or other developments in 1995, for alleged offenses that ranged in gravity from shoplifting to murder, a Times study found. Items--involving current professional or college athletes, team employees or administrators-- are listed by date of resolution unless otherwise indicated. JANUARY Jan. 1--SHELDON KENNEDY, Winnipeg Jet player, charged with possession of marijuana. Resolution: Charges dropped.

Situationally speaking, there are really only two places you can be: indoors or outdoors. Some people try to blur the line between the two. Solariums, canopied terraces, screened-in porches--such spaces aim to encompass both halves of the world, the in and the out. The trend today, though, seems to be to keep the two apart--and not just that but to shrink the great wide open, to render it superfluous.

Knott's Berry Farm has reached an agreement in principle to develop the amusement park portion of what will be the world's largest retail and entertainment complex in a suburb of Minneapolis. The agreement was formally announced Wednesday in Las Vegas by Indianapolis-based Melvin Simon & Associates, the nation's second-largest developer.